Why Don't Foreign Firms Cooperate in U.S. Antidumping Investigations?: An Emperical Analysis

Foreign firms face punitive duties if they do not cooperate with the US Department of Commerce (DOC) in antidumping procedures. For example, 37% of all foreign firms involved in antidumping investigations in the US chose faced “facts available” margins for the 1995-2002 period, with average antidumping duties of 31% for cooperating foreign firms, compared to 87% for those who do not. The existing literature has focused on how DOC discretion has led to foreign firm non-cooperation. This paper instead examines individual foreign firm’s decisions about whether to cooperate during this same period. We find evidence that non-cooperation is consistent with a model of foreign firms rationally choosing not to cooperate, rather than solely as a result of investigating authority bias against imports.